Background

Jameson was born on September 19, 1859, in Somerville, Massachusetts, the first son and second of four children of John and Mariette (Thompson) Jameson. He never used his first name. His immigrant ancestor on the paternal side was Thomas Jameson, of Scottish stock, who came to New Hampshire in 1746 from Coleraine in northern Ireland; on the maternal side he was a direct descendant of Captain Edward Johnson (1598-1672), a founder of Woburn, Massachusetts, the author of Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England.

During most of Franklin's boyhood his father was master of the Boylston School in Boston, but with its discontinuance in 1873 he gave up teaching and secured admission to the bar, having earlier read law. Franklin's boyhood was that of a schoolmaster's son in a devout Christian family. His exceptional intellectual qualities, including an extraordinarily retentive memory and great powers of application, manifested themselves early in life. In the fall of 1875 his father decided to remove the family to Amherst, Massachusetts, and to open a law office there.

Education

Jameson attended public schools and prepared for college at the Roxbury Latin School, from which he was admitted to Harvard in June 1874. After the family moved to Amherst, Jameson entered fully into the life of Amherst College and made many lasting friendships there. While a freshman he resolved to devote the rest of his life to history, a decision already suggested by his aptitudes and interests but one which was doubtless encouraged by the teaching of Prof. John W. Burgess. He gave much time to modern languages, acquiring a thorough knowledge of German and French and an acquaintance with Spanish. He greatly fortified his curricular education by assiduous reading, especially in history, from which his retentive memory enabled him to build up a background of enduring knowledge.

It was upon the advice of Herbert B. Adams that Jameson decided to undertake graduate study in the recently founded Johns Hopkins University, at Baltimore, where he was to spend eight years (1880-1888) as graduate scholar, fellow, assistant, and associate, and from which he received the first doctorate in history conferred by the university (1882). As a graduate student Jameson followed courses in international law and diplomacy, Anglo-Saxon, and English constitutional history and was a critical member of Adams's seminary. As assistant and associate he conducted courses, mostly for undergraduates, in classical history, on the Greek historians, in English history, and on physical geography as a factor in ancient history. He also gave a pioneer graduate course on the principles and processes of historical criticism. He held honorary doctorates from Amherst, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Princeton, and Michigan.

Career

Jameson was eager to enter upon graduate study in Germany, then the surest approach to a professorship, but efforts to borrow the necessary funds were unsuccessful, and, as an intermediate step, he obtained a position as teacher of Latin and history in the Worcester, Massachusеtts, high school. He was a conscientious teacher who interested himself in his pupils but was not successful in maintaining discipline, and his appointment was not renewed. It was early in 1882 that he determined to devote his historical career to the study of American history, an exceptional and courageous resolution at the time. He had already written an essay in this field, "The Origin and Development of the Municipal Government of New York City" (Magazine of American History, May and September 1882). This directed his attention to the history of the Dutch and Swedish West India companies, resulting a few years later in a substantial biographical study of their founder, Willem Usselinx (American Historical Association, Papers, vol. II, no. 3, 1887). His doctoral dissertation, "Montauk and the Common Lands of Easthampton" (Magazine of American History, April 1883), he considered an exercise in research and writing rather than a major contribution to knowledge, which latter concept of the doctoral dissertation he deplored.

Soon after receiving his doctorate he began to plan a magnum opus, a "constitutional and political history of the States of the Union"; but though he published a preliminary study in 1886, the project was never carried out. Among many other activities of his busy Hopkins years, Jameson wrote reviews in German of important works on American history for the Historische Zeitschrift; as a vacation task in 1883 he copied the town records of Amherst, 1735-1789, and edited them for publication by the local newspaper; he took part in the founding of the American Historical Association in 1884; he delivered many lectures, including a series published as The History of Historical Writing in America (1891); and he planned and edited a volume of Essays in the Constitutional History of the United States 1775-1789 (1889). He had a marked facility for humorous verse, which he composed for various occasions. He taught a Sunday class in a penitentiary and served as leader of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. During his years in Baltimore he also frequented Washington, where he had relatives, and became familiar with archives and other historical collections, developed an interest in the history of the South, and made the acquaintance of Henry Adams.

In June 1888 Jameson was appointed to the professorship of history in Brown University, at Providence, succeeding E. Benjamin Andrews, who went to Cornell but returned to Brown as its president a year later. The great popularity of the magnetic Andrews made the succession difficult for the young Jameson, with his austere appearance and exacting standards of scholastic performance. At first he taught all the undergraduate classes in history, but before long he was able to limit his teaching to advanced courses and to promote graduate study.

In 1891 he established a seminary for graduate students and upperclassmen, in which a number of very able men and some women were started on careers of scholarship. He continued at Brown the exceedingly active professional life he had previously led. In 1891 he delivered a series of ten lectures on southern history at Johns Hopkins and spent the summer in Virginia visiting historic sites and seeking out collections of records and manuscripts. In 1895 he took part in a conference which resulted in the founding of the American Historical Review and in his selection as its managing editor, a position which he held until 1928, except for the years 1901-1905 when he was at the University of Chicago. At the same time his activities within and for the American Historical Association were greatly increased.

In 1895-1896 he brought about the creation by the Association of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, of which he was the first chairman and general editor of its reports, as well as special editor of some of the collections of documents which it published, notably the "Correspondence of John C. Calhoun. " In 1896 he wrote a report on Spanish and Dutch settlements prior to 1648 for the Venezuela-Guiana Boundary Commission, an appraisal of the evidence in available printed documents. During these years Jameson also wrote the lectures, first delivered at Barnard College in 1899 and later revised, which were published under the title The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement (1926), a little volume which had an important influence upon the writing of American history for the period it covered. By virtue of his intellectual and moral qualities, Jameson became a recognized leader in the able faculty presided over by President Andrews. When the latter resigned as the result of action by the university Corporation which was induced by concern over his views on the free coinage of silver, the main issue of the presidential campaign of 1896, Jameson inaugurated and led a movement of protest joined by alumni, members of the academic world, and public figures, which caused the Corporation to request the president to withdraw his resignation. In 1957 one of the Houses in the new West Quadrangle at Brown was named for Jameson.

When Jameson ended his twelfth year at Brown in 1900 he had established his position as one of the most valuable and influential members of the historical profession and had achieved an international reputation as editor of the American Historical Review. It was not surprising that he attracted the attention of President William Rainey Harper of the University of Chicago, who was endeavoring to build up a faculty of all the talents. Harper invited Jameson to succeed to the professorship of Hermann E. von Holst and become head of the department of history at Chicago, and after long consideration he accepted. He began his new duties in 1901. Jameson proved himself to be an able administrator of his department, encouraging the younger members and zealous in his search for new talent. He brought distinguished American and European scholars to the university as lecturers. He was able to devote his teaching to graduates and to the formation of future scholars, and his seminary attracted able students. During its first term the seminary studied the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and Jameson's group of "Studies in the History of the Federal Convention of 1787" is a demonstration of his method of dealing with historical sources. Each year he gave a course on the problems of historical method. A plan to which he devoted much time and thought during these Chicago years and which was to mark the turning point of his career was for a center or school of historical studies in Washington. The idea had been suggested to him by Frederick J. Turner.

The foundation in January 1902 of the Carnegie Institution of Washington with Daniel Coit Gilman as its first president seemed to offer an opportunity for the realization of the plan, and it was to Gilman that Jameson elaborated the idea and its many possibilities. The result was the creation of the Bureau (later Department) of Historical Research of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1903. Though Professor Andrew C. McLaughlin, rather than Jameson, was appointed as its organizing director, Jameson became the adviser upon whom McLaughlin most depended, and when the latter resumed his teaching career in 1905, Jameson succeeded him. When he entered upon his duties, Jameson found the program which he himself had first drawn up successfully started. It included the editorship by the director of the American Historical Review, the exploration of the archives of the national government, the exploration of foreign archives for materials relating to American history, and the editing and publication of selected bodies of historical documents. There was also a broad fringe of related activties, among which was the maintenance of a center of information for the benefit of scholars and students.

The initial exploration of the government's archives had resulted in the publication of the Guide to the Archives of the Government of the United States in Washington by Claude H. Van Tyne and Waldo G. Leland, in 1904, of which an enlarged edition was published in 1907. The territorial records, so important for the history of many states, were more fully described in a Calendar by David W. Parker (1911), which led to cooperation among state historical agencies in the detailed listing of documents and finally to the publication by the government of the voluminous Territorial Papers of the United States (1934). The exploration of the government's records, with its revelations of their deplorable neglect, led inevitably to efforts to assure their preservation and efficient administration, and Jameson became the leader of an active and prolonged campaign for the construction of a national archives building and the creation of an administrative establishment. This campaign he carried on with energy, persistence, and realistic strategy, enlisting the support of presidents of the United States and members of their cabinets, of government agencies, and of members of the Congress, as well as of influential organizations and the press.

When the cornerstone of the National Archives Building was laid in 1934, Jameson modestly felt that his efforts over a quarter of a century had been successful. Another campaign, begun by Jameson in 1906 with his article "Gaps in the Published Records of United States History" (American Historical Review, July 1906), led to the eventual establishment by the federal government of the National Historical Publications Commission. The exploration of foreign archives resulted in the publication by the Carnegie Institution under Jameson's close personal direction of more or less comprehensive guides to materials for American history in Great Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and the British West Indies. The program had far-reaching results, for it stimulated more detailed cataloguing by state and other historical agencies and vast operations of copying, the largest and most comprehensive of which was carried on by the Library of Congress. Another major part of the program was the editing and publication of historical documents selected for their significance in filling gaps in the documentation of American history: European treaties bearing on the history of the United States and its dependencies; letters of members of the Continental Congress; documents illustrative of the slave trade; and others.

Jameson himself served as general editor of the series of Original Narratives of Early American History (1906-1917), sponsored by the American Historical Association, and as special editor of three of its nineteen volumes. His interest in American religious history, on which he had lectured at Chicago and the study of which he had urged in his presidential address before the American Historical Association in 1907, caused him to have prepared an Inventory of Unpublished Materials for American Religious History in Protestant Church Archives and Other Repositories by William H. Allison (1910). As a representative of the American Historical Association, Jameson took part in the organization, in 1919, of the American Council of Learned Societies, which was to serve as the member for the United States of the International Union of Academies. His services to the Council were numerous, but the most important of them was the planning of the Dictionary of American Biography, for which he secured financial support from the New York Times, selected the original editor, Allen Johnson, and served as chairman of the Committee of Management. He also gave encouragement and support to the International Committee of Historical Sciences, founded in 1926, and it was upon his suggestion that two of its major projects were undertaken: a list of diplomatic representatives from 1648, and the annual International Bibliography of Historical Sciences. He continued the publication, which he had commenced during his last years at Brown, of an annual list of dissertations in progress in history in American universities, and he made of the annual bibliography of Writings on American History, which he inherited on coming to Washington but for which he was obliged personally to solicit support from year to year and from various sources, a permanent and valuable tool of research.

When, in 1927, the "chair of American history" was created in the Library of Congress as the result of a gift from William Evarts Benjamin, Herbert Putnam, the Librarian of Congress, invited Jameson to serve as its first incumbent and also as chief of the Manuscripts Division of the Library. Having learned that the Carnegie Institution was applying a rule of retirement which would affect him in 1929, at the age of seventy, and having learned also that the plans of the Institution for future historical research had been completely changed, Jameson accepted the new offer. At the Library of Congress, where he spent the nine years of life remaining to him, he continued, as he had at the Carnegie Institution, to assist historical undertakings and to counsel scholars, who flocked to the Manuscripts Division to make use of its vast resources. He expanded the Library's program of copying materials for American history from foreign collections; he greatly increased the holdings of the Manuscripts Division in many different areas of interest, securing important groups of papers; he was a principal adviser to the monumental edition of the writings of George Washington, an enterprise which he had himself proposed as an appropriate observance of the Washington bicentenary; and he supervised for the Library the compilation, financed by the American Council of Learned Societies, of the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada.

During these years, as always, he welcomed opportunities for the friendly meeting of minds, such as the Librarian's "Round Table, " where he often presided, or the autumnal "convivium historicum" of congenial historians at Branford, Connecticut, which he brought into existence but which did not survive him. Many honors had come to Jameson, some of them early. The University of Cambridge invited him to be present at a convocation to receive a doctorate of letters, but he was unable to make the trip to England. In 1932 he suffered a coronary thrombosis, from which, however, he made a good recovery after some months of inactivity. In 1937 he was struck by an automobile in front of the Library of Congress, and a leg was fractured. On his return to Washington, after a summer in Maine, he suffered a second coronary occlusion, with myocarditis and lobar pneumonia, and died in his home on Q Street on September 28, 1937. His grave is in Oak Hill Cemetery in the Georgetown section of Washington.

Achievements

• Jameson played a major role in the professional activities of American historians in the early 20th century. He helped establish the American Historical Association.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Arrival of the Pilgrims (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Arrival of the Pilgrims May I say for m...)

  • Willem Usselinx: Founder of the Dutch and Swedish West India Companies (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Willem Usselinx: Founder of the Dutch and Sw...)

  • The American Acta Sanctorum (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The American Acta Sanctorum Still more obvi...)

  • Studies in the History of the Federal Convention of 1787 (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Studies in the History of the Federal Conven...)

  • Encyclopedic Dictionary Of American History; Volume 1

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement

    ( Written when political and military history dominated t...)

Membership

Jameson was a member of the British Academy, a member of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and he also served as President of the American Historical Association (1907).

Personality

Jameson was a man of imposing appearance, six feet in height, lean, well proportioned. His features were large; his gray eyes, with flecks of color, looked out through rimless spectacles. His hair was reddish brown, turning to gray and becoming sparse, and his full beard, at first rounded, was closely trimmed to a point in his later years. His habitual expression was austere, cold, even stern, and belied his true nature, which was revealed by frequent warm and friendly smiles. Though he suffered from digestive difficulties and headaches, he rarely required medical attention, and he did not allow these ills to interrupt his work or affect his disposition. He dressed conservatively and somewhat formally and was slow, though not the last, to lay the old aside.

Interests

• Jameson took no part in athletics but was very fond of walking, which remained through life his favorite and indeed his only form of exercise.

Connections

Jameson's marriage, on April 13, 1893, to Sara Elizabeth Elwell of Brooklyn, New York, brought about a change in his mode of life but no diminution of his professional activities. His wife and their two children, Francis C. and Katrina, survived him.

Father:

John Jameson

Mother:

Mariette Thompson

Spouse:

Sara Elizabeth Elwell

Daughter:

Katrina Jameson

Son:

Francis C. Jameson

Friend:

Thomas Woodrow Wilson

He was an American statesman and academic who served as the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921.

Friend:

Davis Rich Dewey

He was an American economist and statistician.

Friend:

Albert Shaw

He was a prominent American journalist and academic of the early 20th century.

References

• An Historian's World: Selections from the Correspondence of John Franklin Jameson
• The Jamesons in America. 1647-1900 : genealogical records and memoranda
• John Franklin Jameson and the Development of Humanistic Scholarship in America: Volume 1: Selected Essays (John Franklin Jameson & the Development of Humanistic Schola)